The Historiographical Development of the Concept “mfecane” and ...

Aboriginal?, 33 had already betrayed his preoccupation with this theme in his
Annals of Natal. He examined the various estimates in the literature for the
number of Africans living in Natal in the mid-1820’s who were believed to have
survived the depopulation by the Zulu amaButho. While many authors
postulated a figure of around 3 000, 34 he agreed with Fynn and Grout, who
informed the Natal Native Affairs Commission that there were between 75 000
and 83 000 Africans in Natal at that time. 35 While holding on to the ideas that
Natal had been depopulated and that the majority of Natal’s African population
were immigrants, he was forced by the evidence to admit that there were
considerably more people left in Natal by the mid-1820’s than believed by most
authors. In spite of this, Bird was still unable to draw the obvious conclusions
and abandon his belief in the depopulation of Natal.
Fynney was a settler who became immersed in Zulu culture, language and
history during his teenage years while farming, hunting and undertaking trading
journeys into Zululand. He epitomised the racist and anti-Zulu attitudes of the
Natal colonists. As a junior civil servant between 1876 and 1881 he was
involved in Shepstone’s occupation of the Z.A.R., as well as in the build-up to
the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and subsequently the war itself. His book 36 was
written in the context of his involvement on the British side in that war. He, too,
was obsessed with the origin of the Natal African population. However, some of
his information was at odds with that found in earlier publications, and thus must
have come from different oral sources encountered during his travels. He wrote
that Dingiswayo, not Shaka, had invented the amaButho and the stabbing
spear. Furthermore, he stated that Shaka, whom Fynney viewed as a
bloodthirsty slaughterer, had put members of the ruling house to death when
conquering a particular chiefdom and had then incorporated the remainder of
33 J. Bird, Is the Kafir Population in Natal Alien or Aboriginal? (Pietermaritzburg, 1890).
34 Smith, ‘Historical Précis of Natal’, 170-1. Bird, Population in Natal, 10-12.
35 Natal Colony, 1852. Rept. Natal Native Affairs Commission, 1852-1853, 5-10, 32, 35-36.
1853. Proceedings, Natal Native Affairs Commission, 1853,10-20, 23-4. as referred to in Bird,
Population in Natal.
36 Fynney, ‘Rise and Fall of Zulu Nation'. De Kock et al. (eds), Dictionary S. A. Biography
(1981), IV, 170-71.
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